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Buster - black screen after grub menu.

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miks
Posts: 60
Joined: 2009-08-21 17:41

Buster - black screen after grub menu.

#1 Post by miks »

I have been running KDE Buster on this Acer Zenbook UF433F since January and started getting problems a couple of months ago with a black screen appearing very early on in the boot process, after the two echo lines in the grub2 stanza have printed and quickly disappeared at the top left corner of the screen. I do not reboot that often so it has not bothered me that much as after several attempts, it will usually boot normally. Right now, I am unable to get past the black screen after several attempts and also cannot boot into MX18 either. Fortunately, I have Manjaro installed and this does boot up normally, so I am currently using that to write this post.

CPU: Quad Core Intel Core i5-8265U (-MT MCP-). Intel UHD Graphics 620.

I have tried both the stock kernel and the most recent liquorix 4.19 kernel, both of which work fine once booted. I am puzzled by the fact that they sometimes will boot OK and sometimes will not, even if no changes have been made to the system. Removing quiet splash from the kernel line does not reveal any clues as no text appears after the two echo lines, nor does adding nomodeset make any difference.

Does anyone have any ideas?

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ruwolf
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Re: Buster - black screen after grub menu.

#2 Post by ruwolf »


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miks
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Re: Buster - black screen after grub menu.

#3 Post by miks »

Thanks ruwolf. Unfortunately, that is too technical for me, and I would have thought well beyond what an ordinary user would be able to comprehend. If the problem relates to initramfs, why the random ability to boot? As the problem affects both Buster and MX18, but not Manjaro, I am wondering if it relates to intel-microcode? Could a dodgy version of intel-microcode cause random failure to complete the boot process, and could the same version be in Buster and MX18?
As far as I can understand, Manjaro by default uses it's grub to load intel-ucode before the kernel is loaded, but has a fallback-initrd entry so it can boot from other OS's versions of grub so presumably the fallback-initrd will load intel-ucode if grub has failed to already load it. Not sure if that is relevant here though?

Edit: I suppose what I am getting at is the connection I can see is that if you try to boot Manjaro from a Debian grub stanza, it fails with a black screen unless you use the fallback-initrd entry, so is a black screen indicative of failure to load intel-microcode successfully?

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miks
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Re: Buster - black screen after grub menu.

#4 Post by miks »

Update:
Seems to boot consistently now running 5.1.0-16.1-liquorix-amd64. Still unable to boot the stock kernel though.

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Re: Buster - black screen after grub menu.

#5 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Try switching to the Intel DDX driver by creating a file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf with this content:

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
   Identifier "Intel Graphics"
   Driver "intel"
EndSection
You can do this in MX Linux by using the Config Options tab in the mx-tweak tool and selecting the Intel driver instead of the modesetting driver.
deadbang

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miks
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Re: Buster - black screen after grub menu.

#6 Post by miks »

Thanks for that Head_on_a_Stick. It has worked for MX using the stock kernel but 4.20 will not boot. As for Buster, still no boot on the stock kernel but Liquorix 5.1 is still booting.

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